


There in the Time Slip

by helsinkibaby



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-03
Updated: 2006-09-03
Packaged: 2018-06-09 16:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6915049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> He stared at me and I felt a change, time meant nothing, never would again</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	There in the Time Slip

**Author's Note:**

> This? Can be definitively described as crack!fic. I’m just saying.

There are things in Sara’s life, in Sara’s past, that she’s never told anyone about. Much of it is because it’s painful, or uncomfortable. Her family history, for example, isn’t something that she can just drop into the conversation.

However, much of what she can’t tell anyone has less to do with making people uncomfortable, and more to do with the fact that they simply wouldn’t believe her if she told them.

They might believe that she was a foster child, that she knows what it’s like to be at the mercy of the system, her life in the hands of others, but they’ll never know what it was like to escape that, to move into a life that few people have ever dreamed about.

She’ll never tell anyone about the time that she was taking her time on her way home from school, taking the long way around because she didn’t particularly want to return to the foster home heaving with children. She’ll never talk about how everything became very still all of a sudden, before the air was filled with a strange roaring wind, deafening her, blinding her, making her drop her schoolbooks as she crouched down in an instinctive protective measure. She remembers how the wind dropped as suddenly as it began, and when she straightened up, looked around her, her mouth dropped open in shock, because where there had been an empty corner in front of her, now there was something that looked like a phone booth, except that it had solid blue walls rather than glass, and it had “Police Box” stencilled in large white letters above what looked like a door.

She rubbed her eyes, sure she was imagining things, and when the door began to open, she would have run away had her legs been able to move. But the man who emerged was remarkably ordinary looking, close cropped dark hair, white teeth gleaming from a huge smile, dressed a little strangely, she’d thought, with a long black leather jacket and black jeans.

“Hello there,” he’d said. “Who are you?”

He spoke as if this was an everyday occurrence, and she’d heard herself reply, “Sara…Sara Sidle.”

For a moment, she didn’t even think he was listening to her, so engrossed was he with looking around him. Then his head snapped towards her, eyes locked on her, then at the ground around her, her school books scattered every which way. “Well, Sara-Sara-Sidle,” he said, giving her that wide grin, “Looks like you’ve made a bit of a mess. Why don’t I help you clear it up?”

He’d set about picking up her books with her, asking her all manner of questions, and despite what she’d always been told about talking to strangers, she found herself answering them. She’d tried to tell herself that it was just natural curiosity – after all, how often did someone literally drop into her life from thin air? – and when he’d told her about himself, who he was and what he could do, she’d surprised herself by agreeing to go with him.

She’s never told anyone of the adventures she had, travelling through time and space with him, but after she returned, when people would comment that she was older than her years, she would smile to herself, wonder how she could be anything else, and she still does. After all, who on earth has seen what she’s seen?

People talk about the Ice Age, but she’s seen it for herself, has stood shivering on a glacier with cold white around her as far as the eye can see. She’s stood on the site of the Pyramids before the Pyramids were even built, and when people talk about the Lady with the Lamp, she doesn’t tell them that, far from being the angel of people’s imaginations, Florence Nightingale was a hard-faced harridan who made her nurses lives a misery.

She listens to Grissom as he talks about the Orionite meteor shower, but she doesn’t tell him that she knows what it’s like to see a meteor shower up close, to keep pace with one of the rocks as it flies through space. She knows what it’s like to be so close to a star that she could feel its heat on her face, to fancy that she could just reach out her hand and touch it. She’d done that once, without conscious thought, and when he reached out and grabbed her hand, it had been the first time that she’d touched her.

She remembers the hairs of her neck standing up for a different reason, when she stood near Dealey Plaza in 1963, heard gunshots and screams and car tyres squealing as if they could outrun the eyes of the world that would soon be upon them. She’d run away, the weight of history for once too much for her to bear, and when he’d caught up with her, she’d been throwing up in the bushes. She’d thought he’d make fun of her, but he’d just helped her up, told her that you got used to things like that when you’d been around for nine thousand years. To take her mind off it, he’d taken her to get ice cream on Santa Monica pier, and they’d just been paying when someone shouted and turned up their car radio, and they heard those famous words, “That’s one small step for man… one giant leap for mankind.”

She tells Grissom that her knowledge of Japanese history and antiquities isn’t good, but when she stands in front of a seventeenth century kabuki robe, she remembers standing in Kyoto with a hood pulled over her face, watching as those first dances were displayed. She remembers the ripples of excitement that had gone through the crowd, how the hairs on the back of her neck stood up at the skill involved.

She knows that her parents loved one another once, that once upon a time they were happy. She knows that because she stood on a hilltop in Tomales Bay on their wedding day, looked down at them as they exchanged vows on the beach, surf crashing on the rocks nearby, seagulls providing mournful music that almost sounded prophetic. She’d sniffled quietly, hardly able to bear the knowledge of what that happy couple had become, and he’d reached over and taken her hand, offering what wordless comfort he could.

She knows what it is to stand on a Civil War battlefield, to watch the Berlin Wall being torn down, and she smiles when she sees the Beatles landing in America, remembers how he’d made fun of their clothes and hairstyles. She’d lifted one eyebrow, reminding him that he wasn’t exactly dressing in the style of the day, and he’d just shrugged one shoulder, telling her, “I’ve always been ahead of my time, me.” He hadn’t been looking at her when he spoke, but then he did, eyes wide, as if he was letting her in on some colossal joke. “Get it? Time Lord? Ahead of my time? Funny, eh?”

She hadn’t thought so, but she laughed anyway. He’d always been able to make her laugh.

She hadn’t laughed though, when he’d told her that it was time for her to get back to her life. “You’re meant for more than this, Sara-Sara-Sidle,” he’d told her. “You’ve got a great life ahead of you.”

“You’ve seen it, have you?” Sara had tried to smile through her tears, but he’d been very serious when he nodded.

“I have.”

She wondered, at first, how it was going to work, because she didn’t know how long they’d been traipsing around the universe together, though she would have guessed well over a year. Surely people would have missed her, been looking for her, wondered where she was? He’d shaken his head though, telling her to trust him, and when he’d dropped her off, it had been scant minutes after she’d left with him in the first place. She hadn’t even been late for dinner.

There are times when she wonders if she dreamed it all, if it really happened, but today isn’t one of them. Because today, as she crosses the road to get to a crime scene, she sees something familiar out of the corner of her eye.

She stops in her tracks, afraid to turn around, because it can’t be. It just can’t be.

Then she turns slowly, looks across the road, and it’s there, just like she remembers it.

A big blue box, “Police Box” stencilled above the door.

And standing in front of it, there is a man. Not the man she remembers though, someone different, someone perhaps a little younger, with lighter hair, a more classically handsome face. He’s wearing a suit and tie, a long camel coloured coat, and he’s staring at her as if he’s never seen her before. As she watches, he swallows hard, and then he takes a step towards her, then another, then another.

As he approaches, Sara realises that he’s not alone, that there are two people in front of the TARDIS. One is female, blonde, late teens, thoroughly modern and scruffy in dress, wearing blue jeans and a Union Jack t-shirt that’s mostly obscured by her crossed arms. She’s frowning, not taking her eyes away from Sara, despite the fact that the man standing beside her – dark-skinned, around about the same age, dressed in the same modern-type outfit – is talking to her, hand waving as he does, obviously trying to talk her back into a good mood.

But then _he_ is in front of Sara, and she’s not paying attention to his two companions any more.

His face doesn’t change, is perfectly blank, and for a moment, Sara wonders if he knows her at all. Maybe he doesn’t know her, hasn’t met her yet, she thinks, and then she wonders where the girl fits in, and then she mentally shakes herself, because temporal mechanics always gave her a headache.

Then she stops wondering altogether, because his face splits into a broad and beaming grin, different to the one she’s remembered for so long but no less warm. “Hello,” he says, and she starts, because the accent isn’t the one she remembers either. She goggles at him for a moment, and his face falls. “It’s me,” he tells her, as if she could have forgotten him. “The Doctor.”

“You’ve regenerated.” They are the only words that come to mind, out of all the speeches she’s practiced over the years, and she wants to kick herself.

Then he grins, sticks his hands into his trouser pockets and almost bounces on the balls of his feet. “You like it?” he asks. “Bit different… but hey, could’ve been worse…”

“What are you doing here?”

That’s not in any of the speeches she’s rehearsed either, and his smile falters again. Throwing a look back over his shoulder, towards the TARDIS and the two others, his shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. “I… ah… ran into an old friend recently. Made me wonder how everyone was…” He looks at her then, looks her up and down and beams. “You look fantastic…Sara-Sara-Sidle.”

The name brings back a million memories, and Sara finds herself laughing. He joins her, reaching for her, lifting her up and spinning her around. When he places her down again, he tilts his head in the direction of the TARDIS. “Fancy a spin around the block? For old times’ sake?”

“I…” She glances over her shoulder, at her vehicle, at Warrick’s beside it. She knows he’s expecting her, knows he’s waiting for her, and she knows what she has to do. “I have to work,” she says weakly, hating herself for it, but he just laughs, pulling her in the direction of the TARDIS.

“I’m The Doctor,” he says, and she grins back at him, lets the door close behind her as she leaves Las Vegas, for the moment at least, behind. “I promise… I’ll have you back before you’ve even left.”

 


End file.
